special effects

Yo man, the title says it all!! The Action of Film Festival takes place this month in Long Beach, CA. I'm heading out there and meeting Brianna Shaughnessy, the actress who played Willie- the super kick ass girl! So i announced last week that we were an official selection and learned tonight that Deployment Strategy is 1 of 5 nominations for Best Special Effects!

w00t!! it's finally done! For past month, work on 3D animated shots has been rapid fire. I wanted to post some progress shots, but decided to wait until it was all complete to show you the finished work along with progress shots.

Why? Cuz there will inevitably be someone who watches a pre-vis sequence and snickers, "the resolution is so low!!!" when the point is to focus on composition, blocking, and animation. so here's the reel of final shots.

In the coming days, i'll have more stills and materials in this post to show you how it all unfolded. for now, click read more and enjoy the shots!!

here's the 411: I've completed the last of the computer user-interfaces that appear throughout the film. I didn't realize I had so many of them! The Major's computer appears 3-4 times, the Multibody has one, and so does the sexbot!! I'll be posting clips soon as well as sketches I drafted on paper before designing in photoshop and compositing them.

3D animation is going well. there are 12 shots total and we're in round 2 revisions for 4 of them and round 1 for another 3...Those ArtDuck guys are awesome!! I plan to show you the evolution of them once I have a completed shot. I realized from showing ppl intermediary shots that it's difficult to understand what's done and what's not done.

*SPOILER* Alert...fair warning, I'm normally against revealing too much of a film in commercials and stuff for movies, but we indie filmmakers have a steep upward climb. plus, most of my great shots reveal stuff, so I have no choice! (debate this with me if you want by leaving a comment!), but here's the visual effects reel for the film. it contains almost all the fx (a handful aren't done yet)...take a look...

i had to post this work-in-progress shot for you guys!! I slowed it down to half the speed so you can appreciate/scrutinize my handy work. I'm close to the end of these effects and this sequence is one of the fun ones!! I had to encode in divx so I wouldn't hose your bandwidth. check it yo. When completed and played at regular speed, this sequence is only 10 seconds long! hope you like. more soon. mc

sup all, woah, i'm getting tired! In addition to the day job, i've been committing 4-6 hours a day on the vfx for the film - 1 hour on the train each way + another 2-4 hours in the evening!!

I've been meaning to post some samples for you, but i just don't want to take any time away from actually creating them. many shots are just muzzle flashes and shell ejections- standard stuff now - but there are some others that are just so much fun to do- the thing is, I'm hesitant to show them to you cuz many of them are major plot points that would really ruin the viewing.

so instead, I thought I'd post some links of great places to learn and get vfx assets to enhance your own action flicks...